bookshelf

MIRAGES OF THE MIND

Name: MIRAGES OF THE MIND
Author: Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2413-0

by Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi ; translated by Matt Reeck & Aftab Ahmad ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2015

A pleasure to read and a welcome window on a world we know too little about.

bookshelf

Picaresque, politically shaded novel of life in 20th-century Pakistan, a country and time fading into memory and rife with nostalgia.

The good old days weren’t always so good—but they weren’t so bad, either. Yousufi, well-known in Pakistan but, at the age of 92, just emerging outside that country, delivers a rollicking epic told through the person of one Basharat Ali Farooqi, a bit of a sad sack who constantly makes tough luck for himself: “Now Basharat began to regret his foolishness: why had he loaded into a ramshackle car goods worth twice the car’s amount?” So goes a typical moment, with Basharat wishing a thief would come along and relieve him of his worries and instead courting the attention of the police on a different count. Basharat is nothing if not aspirational, though he seldom succeeds in rising to the rascally heights of his father-in-law, Qibla, who has the look of a devil about him: “His big eyes bulged from their sockets. They were always bloodshot—really bloodshot. As red as pigeon’s blood.” Fearful countenance aside, Qibla is a fellow whose schemes never quite work out according to plan, either. Caught up in the chaos of India and Pakistan at the time of the 1947 partition, Basharat, Qibla, and Yousufi’s other characters do what they can to get by, discovering that if you can’t go home again, you can’t go elsewhere, either. Yousufi writes of the most serious events with balloon-puncturing good humor, and his chapter titles alone are worth the price of admission: “Do Lizards Breastfeed?” “The Teachers Have Eaten Up the Orphanage!” “I Was Punished for the Horny Camel’s Misdeeds.” Doubtless Yousufi courted the displeasure of fundamentalists and nationalists in writing this novel, published in Urdu in 1990; the introduction, good and substantial though it is, might have done a touch more to set it in its context and discuss its reception. But that’s a quibble unworthy of Qibla.

A pleasure to read and a welcome window on a world we know too little about.

Pub Date: July 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8112-2413-0

Page Count: 574

Publisher: New Directions

Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.